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Religious Liberty Notes

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 2, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 31.

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Religious Liberty Notes

By W. A. COLCORD

The ministers of Hartford, Conn., are criticizing very severely the authorities of Luna Park of that city because of certain amusements which are being engaged in on Sundays.
The Elkpoint (S. D.) church celebrated the fourth of July by the rendering of an interesting program on the subject of religious liberty. This was certainly an appropriate theme for the occasion.
Elder J. H. Christian has been elected religious liberty secretary of the South Dakota Conference for the ensuing year. He writes that there is an outlook for an agitation in his State on the question of moral instruction in the public schools.
In the Christian Statesman for June, Rev. J. M. Foster says, “The California disaster is God’s warning voice to the nation,” and cites as the first in a catalogue of national sins, the following: “Our nation dishonors God in trampling under foot the holy Sabbath.”
Schaff, in commenting on the first amendment to the Constitution, says: “This is much more than freedom of religious opinions; for this exists everywhere where, even under the most despotic governments, and is beyond the reach of law, which deals only with overt actions. Freedom of exercise includes public worship, acts of discipline, and every legitimate manifestation of religion.”
On Friday, June 29, next to the last day of the session of Congress just closed, the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar appropriation to the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, with a Sunday-closing provision, passed Congress. The Sunday-closing provision reads: “Provided, That as a condition precedent to the payment of this appropriation in aid of said exposition, the Jamestown Exposition Company shall agree to close the grounds of said exposition to visitors on Sunday during the period of said exposition.” By such means and by such inducements do the advocates of the Sunday sabbath seek to secure the observance of the day.
June 11, H. R. Bill 16,483, known as the Wadsworth Sunday bill, “requiring certain places of business in the District of Columbia to be closed on Sunday,” passed the House of Representatives with an amendment exempting “the sale of fruit at fruit stands and the regular business of restaurants and hotels.” But it did not pass the Senate. This is the same bill that passed the House April 6, 1904, and was tied up by a tie vote in the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Should this measure pass the Senate at the next session of Congress, and receive the signature of the President, it would then become law.
W. A. COLCORD.